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Paul Merrell

Ex-NSA chief jokes about putting Edward Snowden on kill list | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...t-putting-snowden-on-kill-list

surveillance state Hayden Rogers Snowden kill-list

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden joked Thursday about putting Edward Snowden on a kill list.Hayden noted that Snowden has been nominated for a European human rights award.ADVERTISEMENT"I must admit, in my darker moments over the past several months, I'd also thought of nominating Mr. Snowden, but it was for a different list," Hayden said during a panel discussion on cybersecurity hosted by The Washington Post. The audience laughed, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was also on the panel, responded, "I can help you with that."Both officials argued that Snowden's leaks about the scope of the NSA's surveillance programs have done serious damage to U.S. national security.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 13
     
    Two psychopaths in desperate need of heavy medication in the confinement to a locked mental ward.  Real sickos. 
Paul Merrell

Intel chief quits House for talk radio | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-chairman-to-retire-from-house

surveillance state Rogers House-Intelligence-Committee Auction-2014

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is leaving Congress for a career in talk radio.Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Friday he will not seek reelection in 2014, and will instead take a job as a syndicated talk radio host with Cumulus Radio.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 14
     
    FBI's bribery investigation getting too close?
Paul Merrell

A Zombie Bill Comes Back to Life: A Look at The Senate's Cybersecurity Information Shar... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...y-information-sharing-act-2014

surveillance state NSA legislation Cybersecurity Bill Feinstein

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The Senate Intelligence Committee recently introduced the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014. It’s the fourth time in four years that Congress has tried to pass "cybersecurity" legislation. Unfortunately, the newest Senate bill is one of the worst yet. Cybersecurity bills aim to facilitate information sharing between companies and the government, but they always seem to come with broad immunity clauses for companies, vague definitions, and aggressive spying powers. Given such calculated violence to users' privacy rights, it’s no surprise that these bills fail every year. What is a surprise is that the bills keep coming back from the dead. Last year, President Obama signed Executive Order 13636 (EO 13636) directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to expand current information sharing programs that are far more privacy protective than anything seen in recent cybersecurity bills. Despite this, members of Congress like Rep. Mike Rogers and Senator Dianne Feinstein keep on introducing bills that would destroy these privacy protections and grant new spying powers to companies.
  • Aside from its redundancy, the Senate's bill grants two new authorities to companies. First, the bill authorizes companies to launch countermeasures for a "cybersecurity purpose" against a "cybersecurity threat." "Cybersecurity purpose" is so broadly defined that it means almost anything related to protecting (including physically protecting) an information system, which can be a computer or software. The same goes for a "cybersecurity threat," which includes anything that "may result" in an unauthorized effort to impact the availability of the information system. Combined, the two definitions could be read by companies to permit attacks on machines that unwittingly contribute to network congestion. The countermeasures clause will increasingly militarize the Internet—a prospect that may appeal to some "active defense" (aka offensive) cybersecurity companies, but does not favor the everyday user. Second, the bill adds a new authority for companies to monitor information systems to protect an entity's rights or property. Here again, the broad definitions could be used in conjunction with the monitoring clause to spy on users engaged in potentially innocuous activity. Once collected, companies can then share the information, which is also called “cyber threat indicators,” freely with government agencies like the NSA.
  • Such sharing will occur because under this bill, DHS would no longer be the lead agency making decisions about the cybersecurity information received, retained, or shared to companies or within the government. Its new role in the bill mandates DHS send information to agencies like the NSA—"in real-time and simultaneous[ly]." DHS is even barred from "delay[ing]" or "interfer[ing]" with the information, which ensures that DHS's current privacy protections won’t be applied to the information. The provision is ripe for improper and over-expansive information sharing. This leads to a question: What stops your sensitive personal information from being shared by companies to the government? Almost nothing. Companies must only remove personally identifiable information if the information is known to be US person information and not directly related to the threat. Such a willful blindness approach is inappropriate. Further, the bill does not even impose this weak minimization requirement on information shared by, and within, the government (including federal, state, local, and tribal governments) thereby allowing the government to share information containing personally identifiable information. The bill should require deletion of all information not directly related to a threat.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Once the information is sent to a government agency, it can use the information for reasons other than for cybersecurity purposes. One clause even allows the information to be used to prosecute violations of the Espionage Act—a World War I era law that was meant to prosecute spies but has been used in recent years primarily to go after journalists’ sources. The provisions grant the government far too much leeway in how to use the information for non-cybersecurity purposes. The public won’t even know what information is being collected, shared, or used because the bill will exempt all of it from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
  • The bill also retains near-blanket immunity for companies to monitor information systems, to share information, and to use countermeasures. The high bar immunizes an incredible amount of activity, including negligent damage to property and may deprive private entities of legal recourse if a computer security contractor is at fault for destruction of property. Existing private rights of action for violations of the Wiretap Act, Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act would be precluded or at least sharply restricted by the clause. It remains to be seen why such immunity is needed when just a few months ago, the FTC and DOJ noted they would not prosecute companies for sharing such information. It's also unclear because we continue to see companies freely share information among each other and with the government both publicly via published reports and privately.
Paul Merrell

TGIF: The Phony Trade-off between Privacy and Security The Future of Freedom Foundation - 0 views

fff.org/...f-between-privacy-and-security

surveillance state Obama Obama-speech privacy-v-security

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Most people take it for granted — because they’ve heard it so many times from politicians and pundits — that they must trade some privacy for security in this dangerous world. The challenge, we’re told, is to find the right “balance.” Let’s examine this.
  • In other words, in the freed market I would find the right “balance” for myself, and you would do the same. One size wouldn’t be deemed to fit all. The market would cater to people with a range of security/privacy concerns, striking the “balance” differently for different people. That’s as it should be. Actually, we can say that there would be no trade-off between privacy and security at all, because the information would be voluntarily disclosed by each individual on mutually acceptable terms. Under those circumstances, it wouldn’t be right to call what the firm does an “intrusion.” But that sort of situation is not what Barack Obama, Mike Rogers, Peter King, and their ilk mean when they tell us that “we” need to find the right balance between security and privacy. They mean they will dictate to us what the alleged balance will be. We will have no real say in the matter, and they can be counted on to find the balance on the “security” side of the spectrum as suits their interests. That’s how these things work.
  • where the state is concerned, you can’t trade off privacy against security because they’re exactly the same thing.
Paul Merrell

U.S. intelligence committees say they're not properly consulted on Syria | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...congress-idUSBRE97R18W20130828

war & peace Syria Obama Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - U.S. congressional intelligence committee leaders believe the Obama administration has not properly consulted them as the president engages in final deliberations for possible military action in Syria, according to congressional officials. One of the officials said the administration's discussions with critical lawmakers, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers, had been limited to "very brief status updates."Another official said such talks had largely taken place over unclassified non-secure phone lines, making it difficult to discuss sensitive intelligence findings or details of the administration's plans for a possible U.S. military response.
  • A number of U.S. lawmakers have complained in recent days that Obama must do more to involve Congress in any decision to punish Syria militarily in response to last week's chemical weapons attack on thousands of civilians.John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday asking him "to clearly articulate" to the public and Congress his objectives, policy and strategy for Syria."I have conferred with the chairmen of the national security committees who have received initial outreach from senior Administration officials, and while the outreach has been appreciated, it is apparent from the questions above that the outreach has, to date, not reached the level of substantive consultation," Boehner wrote.
Paul Merrell

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : If Spying on Senate is So Bad, Why is... - 0 views

ronpaulinstitute.org/...-ok-for-them-to-spy-on-us.aspx

surveillance state Feinstein hypocrisy ron paul

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The reaction of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to last week’s revelations that the CIA secretly searched Senate Intelligence Committee computers reveals much about what the elites in government think about the rest of us. “Spy on thee, but not on me!”   The hypocrisy of Sen. Feinstein is astounding. She is the biggest backer of the NSA spying on the rest of us, but when the tables are turned and her staff is the target she becomes irate. But there is more to it than that. There is an attitude in Washington that the laws Congress passes do not apply to Members. They can trample our civil liberties, they believe, but it should never affect their own freedom.
  • Remember that much of this started when politicians rushed to past the PATRIOT Act after 9/11. Those of us who warned that such new powers granted to the state would be used against us someday were criticized as alarmist and worse. The violations happened just as we warned, but when political leaders discovered the breach of our civil liberties they did nothing about it. It was not until whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and others informed us of the abuses that the “debate” over surveillance that President Obama claimed to welcome could even begin to take place! Left to politicians like Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, and President Obama, we would never have that debate because we would not know.
Paul Merrell

Lack of Due Diligence: The NSA's "the Analyst Didn't Give a Fuck" Violation | emptywheel - 0 views

www.emptywheel.net/...st-didnt-give-a-fuck-violation

surveillance state NSA privacy-violations stats lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The NSA claims there have been no willful violations the law relating to the NSA databases. For example, NSA’s Director of Compliance John DeLong just said ”NSA has a zero tolerance policy for willful misconduct. None of the incidents were willful.” House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers just said the documents show “no intentional or willful violations.” Which is why I want to look more closely at the user error categories included in the May 3, 2012 audit. The report doesn’t actually break down the root cause of errors across all violations. But it does for 3 different types of overlapping incident types (the 195 FISA authority incidents, the 115 database query ones, and the 772 S2 Directorate violations).
  • What I’m interested in are the three main types of operator error: human error, resources, and lack of due diligence.
  • But then there’s a third category: lack of due diligence. The report defines lack of due diligence as “a failure to follow standard operating procedures.” But some failure to follow standard operating procedure is accounted for in other categories, like training, the misapplied query techniques, and the apparent inadequate research violations. This category appears to be something different than the “honest mistake” errors categorized under human error. In fact, by the very exclusion of these violations from the “human error” category, NSA seems to be admitting these violations aren’t errors. These violations of standard operating procedures, it seems, are intentional. Not errors. Willful violations. At the very least, this category seems to count the violations on behalf of analysts who just don’t give a fuck what he rules are, they’re going to ignore the rules. This category, what consider the “Analyst didn’t give a fuck” category, accounts for 9% to 20% of all the violations broken out by root cause.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In aggregate, these violations may not amount to all that many given the thousands of queries run every year — they make up just 68 of the violations in S2, for example. Those 68 due diligence violations make up almost 8% of the violations in the quarter, not counting due diligence violations that may have happened in other Directorates. John DeLong, who is in charge of compliance at NSA, says the Agency has zero tolerance for willful misconduct. But the NSA appears to have a good deal more tolerance for a lack of due diligence.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Aug 13
     
    Marcy at EmptyWheel digs into the leaked NSA audit reports and exposes what appears to be another Obama Administration lie: that none of the violations of surveillance law by NSA staff were willful. NSA appears to be hiding the willful violations under the misleadingly titled "lack of due diligence" category. Who says numbers can't lie, if they're miscategorized?   
Paul Merrell

Israel Still Holds Plenty of U.S. Cards » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Name... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...till-holds-plenty-of-u-s-cards

war & peace Israel Israel-lobby Israel-firsters AIPAC foreign-agents corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • More than ever, Israel is isolated from world opinion and the squishy entity known as “the international community.” The Israeli government keeps condemning the Iran nuclear deal, by any rational standard a positive step away from the threat of catastrophic war. In the short run, the belligerent responses from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are bound to play badly in most of the U.S. media. But Netanyahu and the forces he represents have only begun to fight. They want war on Iran, and they are determined to exercise their political muscle that has long extended through most of the Washington establishment. While it’s unlikely that such muscle can undo the initial six-month nuclear deal reached with Iran last weekend, efforts are already underway to damage and destroy the negotiations down the road. On Capitol Hill the attacks are most intense from Republicans, and some leading Democrats have also sniped at the agreement reached in Geneva.
  • A widespread fear is that some political precedent might be set, undercutting “pro-Israel” leverage over U.S. government decisions. Such dread is inherent in the negative reactions from Netanyahu (“a historic mistake”), GOP lawmakers like House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers (“a permission slip to continue enrichment”) and Senator Saxby Chambliss (“we’ve let them out of the trap”), and Democratic lawmakers like Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez (“this agreement did not proportionately reduce Iran’s nuclear program”) and Senator Charles Schumer (“it does not seem proportional”). Netanyahu and many other Israelis — as well as the powerhouse U.S. lobbying group AIPAC and many with similar outlooks in U.S. media and politics — fear that Israel’s capacity to hold sway over Washington policymakers has begun to slip away. “Our job is to be the ones to warn,” Israel’s powerful finance minister, Yair Lapid, told Israeli Army Radio on Sunday. “We need to make the Americans to listen to us like they have listened in the past.” This winter and spring, the Israeli government and its allies are sure to strafe U.S. media and political realms with intense barrages of messaging. “Israel will supplement its public and private diplomacy with other tools,” the New York Times reported Monday from Jerusalem. “Several officials and analysts here said Israel would unleash its intelligence industry to highlight anticipated violations of the interim agreement.” Translation: Israel will do everything it can to undermine the next stage of negotiations and prevent a peaceful resolution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.
Paul Merrell

NSA oversight dismissed as 'illusory' as anger intensifies in Europe and beyond | World... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...veillance-anger-deepens-europe

surveillance state NSA NSA-oversight NSA-blowback IAHCR U.N. legislation Sensenbrenner Leahy

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration's international surveillance crisis deepened on Monday as representatives from a Latin American human rights panel told US diplomats that oversight of the programs was "illusory".Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of foreign nationals – something the agency argues is both central to its existence and necessary to prevent terrorism. "With a program of this scope, it's obvious that any form of control becomes illusory when there's hundreds of millions of communications that become monitored and surveilled," said Felipe Gonzales, a commissioner and Chilean national."This is of concern to us because maybe the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights may become a target as well of surveillance," said Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a commissioner and Colombian citizen.
  • Frank La Rue, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told the commission that the right to privacy was "inextricably linked" to free expression. "What is not permissible from a human rights point of view is that those that hold political power or those that are in security agencies or, even less, those in intelligence agencies decide by themselves, for themselves, what the scope of these surveillance activities are, or who will be targeted, or who will be blank surveilled," La Rue said.While the US sent four representatives to the hearing, they offered no defence, rebuttal or elaboration about bulk surveillance, saying the October government shutdown prevented them from adequate preparation. "We are here to listen," said deputy permanent representative Lawrence Gumbiner, who pledged to submit written responses within 30 days.All 35 North, Central and South American nations are members of the commission. La Rue, originally from Guatemala and an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council, travels the world reporting on human rights concerns – often in countries with poor democratic standards.
  • The Obama administration has been fielding a week's worth of European outrage following media reports that the NSA had collected a similarly large volume of phone calls from France – which director of national intelligence James Clapper, who recently apologised for misleading the Senate about domestic spying, called "false" – and spying on German chancellor Angela Merkel's own cellphone, which US officials have effectively confessed to. Brazil and Mexico are also demanding answers from US intelligence officials, following reports about intrusive acts of espionage in their territory revealed by documents provided to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The White House has said it will provide some answers after the completion of an external review of its surveillance programs, scheduled to be completed before the end of the year. The Guardian reported on Thursday that the NSA has intercepted the communications of 35 world leaders.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Spying on foreigners is the core mission of the NSA, one that it vigorously defends as appropriate, legal and unexceptional given the nature of global threats and widespread spycraft. Monday's hearing suggested that there are diplomatic consequences to bulk surveillance even if there may not be legal redress for non-Americans. Brazil has already shown a willingness to challenge Washington over bulk surveillance. President Dilma Rousseff postponed a September meeting with President Obama in protest, and denounced the spying during the UN general assembly shortly thereafter. Brazil is also teaming up with Germany at the UN on a general assembly resolution demanding an end to the mass surveillance. The commission's examination of the NSA's bulk surveillance activities suggested a potential southern front could open in the spy crisis just as the administration is attempting to calm down Europe.
  • International discomfort with NSA bulk surveillance is not the only spy challenge the Obama administration now confronts. Congressman James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican and key author of the 2001 Patriot Act, is poised to introduce a bill this week that would prevent the NSA from collecting phone records on American citizens in bulk and without an individual warrant. The National Journal reported that Sensenbrenner's bill, which has a companion in the Senate, has attracted eight co-sponsors who either voted against or abstained on a July amendment in the House that would have defunded the domestic phone records bulk collection, a legislative gambit that came within seven votes of passage.Sensenbrenner's bill, like its Senate counterpart sponsored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, would not substantially restrict the NSA's foreign-focused surveillance, which is a traditional NSA activity. There is practically no congressional appetite, and no viable legislation, to limit the NSA from intercepting the communications of foreigners. An early sign about the course of potential surveillance reforms in the House of Representatives may come as early as Tuesday. The House intelligence committee, a hotbed of support for the NSA, will hold its first public hearing of the fall legislative calendar on proposed surveillance legislation. Its chairman, Mike Rogers of Michigan, has proposed requiring greater transparency on the NSA and the surveillance court that oversees it, but would largely leave the actual surveillance activities of the NSA, inside and outside the United States, untouched.
  • Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the ACLU, which requested the hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, warned the human rights panel that the NSA could "target the foreign members of this commission when they travel abroad", as well as foreign dissidents of US-aligned governments; foreign lawyers for Guantánamo detainees; and other foreigners."If every country were to engage in surveillance as pervasive as the NSA, we would soon live in a state … with no refuge for the world's dissidents, journalists and human rights defenders," Abdo said.
Paul Merrell

The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible | Ele... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...ve-stop-making-remain-credible

surveillance state NSA NSA-debunking lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many others, the arguments are often eerily similar. But as we approach the one year anniversary, it’s time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them.  So if you hear any one of these in the future, you can tell yourself straight up: “this person isn’t credible,” and look elsewhere for current information about the NSA spying. And if these are still in your talking points (you know who you are) it’s time to retire them if you want to remain credible. And next time, the talking points should stand the test of time.
Paul Merrell

U.S. officials scrambled to nab Snowden, hoping he would take a wrong step. He didn't. ... - 0 views

m.washingtonpost.com/...3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html

surveillance state Russia NSA Snowden capture-efforts

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • While Edward Snowden was trapped in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport last year, U.S. officials were confronting their own dearth of options in the White House Situation Room. For weeks, senior officials from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other agencies assembled nearly every day in a desperate search for a way to apprehend the former intelligence contractor who had exposed the inner workings of American espionage then fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow.
  • “The best play for us is him landing in a third country,” Monaco said, according to an official who met with her at the White House. The official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity, added, “We were hoping he was going to be stupid enough to get on some kind of airplane, and then have an ally say: ‘You’re in our airspace. Land.’ ” U.S. officials thought they saw such an opening on July 2 when Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expressed support for Snowden, left Moscow aboard his presidential aircraft. The decision to divert that plane ended in embarrassment when it was searched in Vienna and Snowden was not aboard.
  • Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an “agent of a foreign power,” a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas. If true, it means that the former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor, who leaked thousands of classified files to expose what he considered rampant and illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, is shielded at least to some extent from spying by his former employers.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In interviews, U.S. officials acknowledged that they had no specific intelligence that Snowden would be on Morales’s plane. But the Bolivian leader’s remark was enough to set in motion a plan to enlist France, Spain, Italy and Portugal to block the Bolivian president’s flight home.
  • State Department and CIA officials pressured countries seen as potential destinations to turn Snowden away, reducing his options to a handful hostile toward the United States. Among them was Bolivia, whose president had signaled publicly that he would consider giving Snowden asylum.
  • The lack of a warrant deeming Snowden a foreign agent would also cast doubt on the claims of some of his critics. U.S. officials, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have speculated that Snowden had Russian help in stealing U.S. secrets and probably works with the FSB now. Snowden has acknowledged that he was approached by Russian intelligence upon his arrival, but he has said he rejected the pitch and did not bring any classified files with him. He insisted in a recent NBC television interview that he has “no relationship” with the Russian government.
  • As it crossed Austria, the aircraft made a sudden U-turn and landed in Vienna, where authorities searched the cabin — with Morales’s permission, officials said — but saw no sign of Snowden.
  • Austrian officials said they were skeptical of the plan from the outset and noted that Morales’s plane had taken off from a different airport in Moscow than where Snowden was held. “Unless the Russians had carted him across the city,” one official said, it was unlikely he was on board. Even if Snowden had been a passenger, officials said, it is unclear how he could have been removed from a Bolivian air force jet whose cabin would ordinarily be regarded as that country’s sovereign domain — especially in Austria, a country that considers itself diplomatically neutral. “We would have looked foolish if Snowden had been on that plane sitting there grinning,” said a senior Austrian official. “There would have been nothing we could have done.”
  • Wizner declined to discuss where Snowden lives, or how he secured an apartment in a city where such transactions require government involvement — except to indicate that Snowden’s Russian attorney, Anatoly Kucherena, has helped with such arrangements. Snowden’s relationship with Kucherena, who has close ties to Putin and serves on an FSB advisory board, has fueled speculation that he is working with the Russian government.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Jun 14
     
    Lots of detail on the Feds' efforts to capture Snowden and to persuade the Russians to extradite him.
Paul Merrell

Encouraging Words of Regret From Dean Baquet and Weasel Words From James Clapper - The ... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...uet-weasel-words-james-clapper

surveillance-state NSA-reform encryption Clapper lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • One should not expect any change to come from the U.S. government itself (which includes Congress), whose strategy in such cases is to enact the pretext of “reform” so as to placate public anger, protect the system from any serious weakening, and allow President Obama to go before the country and the world and give a pretty speech about how the U.S. heard their anger and re-calibrated the balance between privacy and security. Any new law that comes from the radically corrupted political class in DC will either be largely empty, or worse. The purpose will be to shield the NSA from real reform. There are, though, numerous other avenues with the real potential to engender serious limits on the NSA’s surveillance powers, including the self-interested though genuine panic of the U.S. tech industry over how surveillance will impede their future business prospects, the efforts of other countries to undermine U.S. hegemony over the internet, the newfound emphasis on privacy protections from internet companies worldwide, and, most of all, the increasing use of encryption technology by users around the world that poses genuine obstacles to state surveillance. Those are all far, far more promising avenues than any bill Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss will let Congress cough up.
  • That national security state officials routinely mislead and deceive the public should never have even been in serious doubt in the first place – certainly not for journalists, and especially now after the experience of the Iraq War. That fact — that official pronouncements merit great skepticism rather than reverence — should be (but plainly is not) fundamental to how journalists view the world. More evidence for that is provided by a Washington Post column today by one of the national security state’s favorite outlets, David Ignatius. Ignatius interviewed the chronic deceiver, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who now “says it appears the impact [of Snowden's leaking] may be less than once feared because ‘it doesn’t look like he [Snowden] took as much’ as first thought.” Clapper specifically casts serious doubt on the U.S. government’s prior claim that Snowden ”had compromised the communications networks that make up the military’s command and control system”; instead, “officials now think that dire forecast may have been too extreme.” Ignatius — citing an anonymous “senior intelligence official” (who may or may not be Clapper) — also announces that the government has yet again revised its rank speculation about how many documents Snowden took: “This batch of probably downloaded material is about 1.5 million documents, the senior official said. That’s below an earlier estimate of 1.77 million documents.”
  • Most notable is Ignatius’ summary of the government’s attempt to claim Snowden seriously compromised the security of the U.S.: Pressed to explain what damage Snowden’s revelations had done, the official was guarded, saying that there was “damage in foreign relations” and that the leaks had “poisoned [NSA’s] relations with commercial providers.” He also said that terrorist groups had carefully studied the disclosures, turning more to anonymizers, encryption and use of couriers to shield communications. The senior official wouldn’t respond to repeated questions about whether the intelligence community has noted any changes in behavior by either the Russian or Chinese governments, in possible response to information they may have gleaned from Snowden’s revelations. In other words, the only specific damage they can point to is from the anger that other people around the world have about what the U.S. government has done and the fact that people will not want to buy U.S. tech products if they fear (for good reason) that those companies collaborate with the NSA. But, as usual, there is zero evidence provided (as opposed to bald, self-serving assertions) of any harm to genuine national security concerns (i.e., the ability to monitor anyone planning actual violent attacks).
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • As is always the case, the stream of fear-mongering and alarmist warnings issued by the government to demonize a whistleblower proves to be false and without any basis, and the same is true for accusations made about the revelations themselves (“In January, [Mike] Rogers said that the report concluded that most of the documents Snowden had access to concerned ‘vital operations of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force’” – AP: Lawmakers: Snowden’s Leaks May Endanger US Troops“). But none of that has stopped countless U.S. journalists from mindlessly citing each one of the latest evidence-free official claims as sacred fact.
Paul Merrell

Transcript: Comey Says Authors of Encryption Letter Are Uninformed or Not Fair-Minded |... - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...-letter-uninformed-fair-minded

surveillance state FBI Comey encryption backdoors

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 May 15 - No Cached
  • Earlier today, FBI Director James Comey implied that a broad coalition of technology companies, trade associations, civil society groups, and security experts were either uninformed or were not “fair-minded” in a letter they sent to the President yesterday urging him to reject any legislative proposals that would undermine the adoption of strong encryption by US companies. The letter was signed by dozens of organizations and companies in the latest part of the debate over whether the government should be given built-in access to encrypted data (see, for example, here, here, here, and here for previous iterations). The comments were made at the Third Annual Cybersecurity Law Institute held at Georgetown University Law Center. The transcript of his encryption-related discussion is below (emphasis added).
  • Increasingly, communications at rest sitting on a device or in motion are encrypted. The device is encrypted or the communication is encrypted and therefore unavailable to us even with a court order. So I make a showing of probable cause to a judge in a criminal case or in an intelligence case to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that the content of a particular defense or a particular communication stream should be collected to our statutory authority, and the judge approves, increasingly we are finding ourselves unable to read what we find or we’re unable to open a device. And that is a serious concern. I am actually — I think encryption is a good thing. I think there are tremendous societal benefits to encryption. That’s one of the reasons the FBI tells people not only lock your cars, but you should encrypt things that are important to you to make it harder for thieves to take them.
  • A group of tech companies and some prominent folks wrote a letter to the President yesterday that I frankly found depressing. Because their letter contains no acknowledgment that there are societal costs to universal encryption. Look, I recognize the challenges facing our tech companies. Competitive challenges, regulatory challenges overseas, all kinds of challenges. I recognize the benefits of encryption, but I think fair-minded people also have to recognize the costs associated with that. And I read this letter and I think, “Either these folks don’t see what I see or they’re not fair-minded.” And either one of those things is depressing to me. So I’ve just got to continue to have the conversation. I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think a democracy should drift to a place where suddenly law enforcement people say, “Well, actually we — the Fourth Amendment is an awesome thing, but we actually can’t access any information.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But we have a collision going on in this country that’s getting closer and closer to an actual head-on, which is our important interest in privacy — which I am passionate about — and our important interest in public safety. The logic of universal encryption is inexorable that our authority under the Fourth Amendment — an amendment that I think is critical to ordered liberty — with the right predication and the right oversight to obtain information is going to become increasingly irrelevant. As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is that all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, therefore all of our lives — I know there are no criminals here, but including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies — will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court ordered process. And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning. I think we need to have a conversation about it. Again, how do we strike the right balance? Privacy matters tremendously. Public safety, I think, matters tremendously to everybody. I think fair-minded people have to recognize that there are tremendous benefits to a society from encryption. There are tremendous costs to a society from universal strong encryption. And how do we think about that?
  • We’ve got to have a conversation long before the logic of strong encryption takes us to that place. And smart people, reasonable people will disagree mightily. Technical people will say it’s too hard. My reaction to that is: Really? Too hard? Too hard for the people we have in this country to figure something out? I’m not that pessimistic. I think we ought to have a conversation.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 May 15
     
    Considering that I'm over 10 times as likely to die from a police shoooting as I am from a terrorist attack, how about we begin this conversation, Mr. Comey, by you providing formal notice to everyone who's had the telephone metadata gathered or searched all dates on which such gatherings and searches were conducted so citizens can file suit for violation of their privacy rights? Note that the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held last week that the FBI exceeded statutory authority in gathering and searching that information. Because the gathering and searching was not authorized, that would bring the gathering and searching under the protections of the Privacy Act, including the FBI duty to account for the disclosures  and to pay at least the statutory minimum $1,500 in damges per incident.  Then I would like to have an itemization of all of the commercial software and hardware products that your agency and or your buddies at NSA built backdoors into.  Then your resignation for millions of violations of the Privacy Act would be deeply appreciated. Please feel free to delegate the above mentioned tasks to your successor. 
Paul Merrell

Further Details On The Foreign Spying The NSA Is/Isn't/Is Doing And How Much The Admini... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...on-knowsdoesnt-knowknows.shtml

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback lies Obama finger-pointing must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • In only a handful of days, the usual leak-and-denial progression of the Snowden leaks has completely disintegrated. The pattern was comforting in its own way, but the battle lines are now in a state of flux.
  • The NSA is now fully engaged in its own defense. Losing support it assumed was guaranteed has forced it to start playing dirty. With the administration swiftly extracting itself from this codependent relationship and an angered (but for all the wrong reasons) Sen. Feinstein targeting any number of surveillance programs, the NSA can no longer rely on rehashing talking points and staying above the fray. This will get nastier as it goes on, and that's wonderful. Any opponent of the NSA's programs has to be thrilled to see the agency left to fend for itself. Anyone who enjoys watching government entities forced to confront their own bad decisions has to be thrilled as well. It looks like the NSA is beginning to feel that if it can't have any secrets, neither can anyone else it "answers" to.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 13
     
    Tim Cushing makes an epic effort to chart a course through this week's desertion of the NSA by the Obama Administration. It's a lengthy read but well worth it, hilarious at times as he traces the multiple changes of positions. This is a must-read 
Paul Merrell

News Roundup and Notes: September 12, 2014 | Just Security - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...oundup-notes-september-12-2014

war & peace Syria Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Iraq and Syria The Pentagon has begun rolling out the expanded campaign against the Islamic State, although operations will increase gradually over a number of months [Wall Street Journal’s Julian E. Barnes]. Retired Marine general, John R. Allen, has been chosen to coordinate the international coalition against ISIS, according to a senior administration official [New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon]. In an interview with NPR (Eyder Peralta), Obama’s national security advisor Susan Rice emphasized that the operation against ISIS would not be “Iraq war redux” and that the U.S. is not going to deploy ground troops with a combat role.
  • Democratic senators are reportedly unnerved by President Obama’s attempt to gain swift authority from Congress to arm and train Syrian rebels [Politico’s Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim]. House Republicans are said to be split on their views, with some, including Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers speaking out in favor, whereas others showed more caution [The Hill’s Scott Wong et al]. The New York Times (Jonathan Weisman) reports that House Republican leaders will call members back to the Capitol early next week, in “a rare show of unity” with President Obama, to authorize the arming and training of rebels in Syria. Arab states remained reserved about the extent of their commitment to military efforts to combat the Islamic State yesterday, even as Secretary of State John Kerry succeeded in obtaining their support at a meeting in Saudi Arabia [Wall Street Journal’s Maria Abi-Habib and Jay Solomon].   Al Jazeera reports that French President Francois Hollande is travelling to Iraq in an act of visible support ahead of possible airstrikes with the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State.
  • The Syrian deputy foreign minister has said that Syria has “no reservations” about airstrikes in the territory, but said that “it is a must” for Obama to call Syrian President Assad [NBC News]. Anne Bernard [New York Times] writes that the prospect of U.S. strikes in Syria “captivated” the people on Thursday, with debate over whether the strikes would help or hinder President Assad. The New York Times (Ben Hubbard et al.) explores the complexities faced by the U.S. in using decentralized and diverse Syrian rebels to counter the Islamic State in Syria. Tom Perry and Alexander Dziadosz [Reuters] explore the impact that U.S. support for the Syrian opposition against the Islamic State will have on the Assad regime.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In Politico Magazine, Mary Ellen O’Connell argues that President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State in Syria has no basis in international law, drawing comparison in legal terms between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine: “arming rebels and conducting airstrikes.” The New York Times editorial board discusses the legal basis for U.S. action against ISIS, accusing Congress of “outrageous” cowardice and allowing President Obama a “free reign to set a dangerous precedent that will last well past this particular military campaign.” The Washington Post editorial board calls President Obama’s strategy “incomplete,” suggesting that airstrikes alone are insufficient and that the U.S. must assist Iraq and Syria to develop so that “terrorist organizations do not emerge again as soon as Americans look away.” Dan Froomkin [The Intercept] discusses media coverage of Obama’s strategy, which indicates that news organizations have realized the plan is a “hot mess.”
  • In other developments, the new UN special envoy to Syria met with President Bashar al-Assad yesterday, pressing for more truces in the country and saying the UN’s first priority was to “facilitate reduction of the violence” [Wall Street Journal’s Sam Dagher]. The CIA has estimated that the number of fighters with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria may have reached 31,000, a number three times their previous calculation [BBC]. The German interior ministry is working on banning the Islamic State terrorist group due to concerns over returning ISIS fighters and public expressions of sympathy with the group [Wall Street Journal’s Andrea Thomas and Harriet Torry]. The Australian government has raised the terror alert level to the second highest, as Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned that a terrorist attack on home soil was likely, though no specific plots were known of [Wall Street Journal’s Rob Taylor].
  • The head of Homeland Security has warned that while ISIS is the most apparent threat to the U.S. currently, officials must stay vigilant to other threats to the United States [Associated Press]. Dennis B. Ross [New York Times] cautions that “Islamists are not our friends,” noting that the “new fault line” in the Middle East is defined by Islamists who “subordinate national identities to an Islamic identity.” The New York Times (David E. Sanger) discusses how President Obama’s decision to take on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria shifts his focus in the Middle East away from his previous objective of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Paul Merrell

Spying drop-off in Iraq preceded fresh insurgency - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-9b05-7ec49dc09d97_story.html

war & peace Iraq ISIL Obama CIA

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Without directly addressing the CIA’s posture in Iraq, agency spokesman Dean Boyd noted that 40 officers have died in the line of duty since September 2001. He called “offensive” any suggestion that “CIA officers are sitting behind desks, hiding out in green zones, or otherwise taking it easy back at the embassy.” Boyd said the intelligence community provided plenty of warning to the Obama administration that the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, known as ISIL, could move on Iraqi cities. “Anyone who has had access to and actually read the full extent of CIA intelligence products on ISIL and Iraq should not have been surprised by the current situation,” he said.
  • Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House intelligence committee, agreed, saying, “This was not an intelligence failure — this was a policy failure.” However, while U.S. intelligence officials predicted that ISIL would attempt to seize territory in Iraq this year, they did not appear to anticipate ISIL’s offensive on June 10 to seize Mosul, which created a momentum that led to other successes. Officials also expressed surprise at how quickly the Iraqi army collapsed. And military leaders contemplating quick airstrikes said there was not enough intelligence to know what to hit.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Jun 14
     
    More indication that the Obama Administration knew of the ISIL attacks well in advance.
Paul Merrell

Running for Cover: A Sham Air Force Summit Can't Fix the Close Air Support Gap Created ... - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...eated-by-Dumping-the-A-10.html

war & peace DoD-procurement F35 A10 scandal

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • “I can’t wait to be relieved of the burdens of close air support,” Major General James Post, the vice commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), allegedly told a collection of officers at a training session in August 2014. As with his now notorious warning that service members would be committing treason if they communicated with Congress about the successes of the A-10, Major General Post seems to speak for the id of Air Force headquarters’ true hostility towards the close air support (CAS) mission. Air Force four-stars are working hard to deny this hostility to the public and Congress, but their abhorrence of the mission has been demonstrated through 70 years of Air Force headquarters’ budget decisions and combat actions that have consistently short-changed close air support. For the third year in a row (many have already forgotten the attempt to retire 102 jets in the Air Force’s FY 2013 proposal), the Air Force has proposed retiring some or all of the A-10s, ostensibly to save money in order to pay for “modernization.” After failing to convince Congress to implement their plan last year (except for a last minute partial capitulation by retiring Senate and House Armed Services Committee chairmen Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA)) and encountering uncompromising pushback this year, Air Force headquarters has renewed its campaign with more dirty tricks.
  • First, Air Force headquarters tried to fight back against congressional skepticism by releasing cherry-picked data purporting to show that the A-10 kills more friendlies and civilians than any other U.S. Air Force plane, even though it actually has one of the lowest fratricide and civilian casualty rates. With those cooked statistics debunked and rejected by Senate Armed Services Chairman Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Air Force headquarters hastily assembled a joint CAS “Summit” to try to justify dumping the A-10. Notes and documents from the Summit meetings, now widely available throughout the Air Force and shared with the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information (CDI), reveal that the recommendations of the Summit working groups were altered by senior Air Force leaders to quash any joint service or congressional concerns about the coming gaps in CAS capabilities. Air Force headquarters needed this whitewash to pursue, yet again, its anti-A-10 crusade without congressional or internal-Pentagon opposition.
  • The current A-10 divestment campaign, led by Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, is only one in a long chain of Air Force headquarters’ attempts by bomber-minded Air Force generals to get rid of the A-10 and the CAS mission. The efforts goes as far back as when the A-10 concept was being designed in the Pentagon, following the unfortunate, bloody lessons learned from the Vietnam War. For example, there was a failed attempt in late-1980s to kill off the A-10 by proposing to replace it with a supposedly CAS-capable version of the F-16 (the A-16). Air Force headquarters tried to keep the A-10s out of the first Gulf War in 1990, except for contingencies. A token number was eventually brought in at the insistence of the theater commander, and the A-10 so vastly outperformed the A-16s that the entire A-16 effort was dismantled. As a reward for these A-10 combat successes, Air Force headquarters tried to starve the program by refusing to give the A-10 any funds for major modifications or programmed depot maintenance during the 1990s. After additional combat successes in the Iraq War, the Air Force then attempted to unload the A-10 fleet in 2004.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • To ground troops and the pilots who perform the mission, the A-10 and the CAS mission are essential and crucial components of American airpower. The A-10 saves so many troop lives because it is the only platform with the unique capabilities necessary for effective CAS: highly maneuverable at low speeds, unmatched survivability under ground fire, a longer loiter time, able to fly more sorties per day that last longer, and more lethal cannon passes than any other fighter. These capabilities make the A-10 particularly superior in getting in close enough to support our troops fighting in narrow valleys, under bad weather, toe-to-toe with close-in enemies, and/or facing fast-moving targets. For these reasons, Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno has called the A-10 “the best close air support aircraft.” Other Air Force platforms can perform parts of the mission, though not as well; and none can do all of it. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) echoed the troops’ combat experience in a recent Senate Armed Services committee hearing: “It's ugly, it's loud, but when it comes in…it just makes a difference.”
  • In 2014, Congress was well on the way to roundly rejecting the Air Force headquarters’ efforts to retire the entire fleet of 350 A-10s. It was a strong, bipartisan demonstration of support for the CAS platform in all four of Congress’s annual defense bills. But in the final days of the 113th Congress, a “compromise” heavily pushed by the Air Force was tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015. The “compromise” allowed the Air Force to move A-10s into virtually retired “backup status” as long as the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office in DoD certified that the measure was the only option available to protect readiness. CAPE, now led by former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller Jamie Morin, duly issued that assessment—though in classified form, thus making it unavailable to the public. In one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel then approved moving 18 A-10s to backup status.
  • The Air Force intends to replace the A-10 with the F-35. But despite spending nearly $100 billion and 14 years in development, the plane is still a minimum of six years away from being certified ready for any real—but still extremely limited—form of CAS combat. The A-10, on the other hand, is continuing to perform daily with striking effectiveness in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—at the insistence of the CENTCOM commander and despite previous false claims from the Air Force that A-10s can’t be sent to Syria. A-10s have also recently been sent to Europe to be available for contingencies in Ukraine—at the insistence of the EUCOM Commander. These demands from active theaters are embarrassing and compelling counterarguments to the Air Force’s plea that the Warthog is no longer relevant or capable and needs to be unloaded to help pay for the new, expensive, more high-tech planes that Air Force headquarters vastly prefers even though the planes are underperforming.
  • So far, Congress has not been any more sympathetic to this year’s continuation of General Welsh’s campaign to retire the A-10. Chairman McCain rejected the Air Force’s contention that the F-35 was ready enough to be a real replacement for the A-10 and vowed to reverse the A-10 retirement process already underway. Senator Ayotte led a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter with Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Richard Burr (R-NC) rebuking Hagel’s decision to place 18 A-10s in backup inventory. Specifically, the Senators called the decision a “back-door” divestment approved by a “disappointing rubber stamp” that guts “the readiness of our nation’s best close air support aircraft.” In the House, Representative Martha McSally (R-AZ) wrote to Secretary Carter stating that she knew from her own experience as a former A-10 pilot and 354th Fighter Squadron commander that the A-10 is uniquely capable for combat search and rescue missions, in addition to CAS, and that the retirement of the A-10 through a classified assessment violated the intent of Congress’s compromise with the Air Force:
  • Some in the press have been similarly skeptical of the Air Force’s intentions, saying that the plan “doesn’t add up,” and more colorfully, calling it “total bullshit and both the American taxpayer and those who bravely fight our wars on the ground should be furious.” Those reports similarly cite the Air Force’s longstanding antagonism to the CAS mission as the chief motive for the A-10’s retirement.
  • By announcing that pilots who spoke to Congress about the A-10 were “committing treason,” ACC Vice Commander Major General James Post sparked an Inspector General investigation and calls for his resignation from POGO and other whistleblower and taxpayer groups. That public relations debacle made it clear that the Air Force needed a new campaign strategy to support its faltering A-10 divestment campaign. On the orders of Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle—the head of Air Combat Command—promptly announced a joint CAS Summit, allegedly to determine the future of CAS. It was not the first CAS Summit to be held (the most recent previous Summit was held in 2009), but it was the first to receive so much fanfare. As advertised, the purpose of the Summit was to determine and then mitigate any upcoming risks and gaps in CAS mission capabilities. But notes, documents, and annotated briefing slides reviewed by CDI reveal that what the Air Force publicly released from the Summit is nothing more than a white-washed assessment of the true and substantial operational risks of retiring the A-10.
  • Just prior to the Summit, a working group of approximately 40 people, including CAS-experienced Air Force service members, met for three days at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to identify potential risks and shortfalls in CAS capabilities. But Air Force headquarters gave them two highly restrictive ground rules: first, assume the A-10s are completely divested, with no partial divestments to be considered; and second, assume the F-35 is fully CAS capable by 2021 (an ambitious assumption at best). The working groups included A-10 pilots, F-16 pilots, and Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs), all with combat-based knowledge of the CAS platforms and their shortfalls and risks. They summarized their findings with slides stating that the divestment would “cause significant CAS capability and capacity gaps for 10 to 12 years,” create training shortfalls, increase costs per flying hour, and sideline over 200 CAS-experienced pilots due to lack of cockpits for them. Additionally, they found that after the retirement of the A-10 there would be “very limited” CAS capability at low altitudes and in poor weather, “very limited” armor killing capability, and “very limited” ability to operate in the GPS-denied environment that most experts expect when fighting technically competent enemies with jamming technology, an environment that deprives the non-A-10 platforms of their most important CAS-guided munition. They also concluded that even the best mitigation plans they were recommending would not be sufficient to overcome these problems and that significant life-threatening shortfalls would remain.
  • General Carlisle was briefed at Davis-Monthan on these incurable risks and gaps that A-10 divestment would cause. Workshop attendees noted that he understood gaps in capability created by retiring the A-10 could not be solved with the options currently in place. General Carlisle was also briefed on the results of the second task to develop a list of requirements and capabilities for a new A-X CAS aircraft that could succeed the A-10. “These requirements look a lot like the A-10, what are we doing here?” he asked. The slides describing the new A-X requirements disappeared from subsequent Pentagon Summit presentations and were never mentioned in any of the press releases describing the summit.
  • At the four-day Pentagon Summit the next week, the Commander of the 355th Fighter Wing, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Col. James P. Meger, briefed lower level joint representatives from the Army and the Marine Corps about the risks identified by the group at Davis-Monthan. Included in the briefing was the prediction that divestment of the A-10 would result in “significant capability and capacity gaps for the next ten to twelve years” that would require maintaining legacy aircraft until the F-35A was fully operational. After the presentation, an Army civilian representative became concerned. The slides, he told Col. Meger, suggested that the operational dangers of divestment of the A-10 were much greater than had been previously portrayed by the Air Force. Col. Meger attempted to reassure the civilian that the mitigation plan would eliminate the risks. Following the briefing, Col. Meger met with Lt. Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for Air Force Headquarters. Notably, the Summit Slide presentation for general officers the next day stripped away any mention of A-10 divestment creating significant capability gaps. Any mention of the need to maintain legacy aircraft, including the A-10, until the F-35A reached full operating capability (FOC) was also removed from the presentation.
  • The next day, Col. Meger delivered the new, sanitized presentation to the Air Force Chief of Staff. There was only muted mention of the risks presented by divestment. There was no mention of the 10- to 12-year estimated capability gap, nor was there any mention whatsoever of the need to maintain legacy aircraft—such as the A-10 or less capable alternatives like the F-16 or F-15E—until the F-35A reached FOC. Other important areas of concern to working group members, but impossible to adequately address within the three days at Davis-Monthan, were the additional costs to convert squadrons from the A-10 to another platform, inevitable training shortfalls that would be created, and how the deployment tempos of ongoing operations would further exacerbate near-term gaps in CAS capability. To our knowledge, none of these concerns surfaced during any part of the Pentagon summit.
  • Inevitably, the Air Force generals leading the ongoing CAS Summit media blitz will point congressional Armed Services and Appropriations committees to the whitewashed results of their sham summit. When they do, Senators and Representatives who care about the lives of American troops in combat need to ask the generals the following questions: Why wasn’t this summit held before the Air Force decided to get rid of A-10s? Why doesn’t the Air Force’s joint CAS summit include any statement of needs from soldiers or Marines who have actually required close air support in combat? What is the Air Force’s contingency plan for minimizing casualties among our troops in combat in the years after 2019, if the F-35 is several years late in achieving its full CAS capabilities? When and how does the Air Force propose to test whether the F-35 can deliver close support at least as combat-effective as the A-10’s present capability? How can that test take place without A-10s? Congress cannot and should not endorse Air Force leadership’s Summit by divesting the A-10s. Instead, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees need to hold hearings that consider the real and looming problems of inadequate close support, the very problems that Air Force headquarters prevented their Summit from addressing. These hearings need to include a close analysis of CAPE’s assessment and whether the decision to classify its report was necessary and appropriate. Most importantly, those hearings must include combat-experienced receivers and providers of close support who have seen the best and worst of that support, not witnesses cherry-picked by Air Force leadership—and the witnesses invited must be free to tell it the way they saw it.
  • If Congress is persuaded by the significant CAS capability risks and gaps originally identified by the Summit’s working groups, they should write and enforce legislation to constrain the Air Force from further eroding the nation’s close air support forces. Finally, if Congress believes that officers have purposely misled them about the true nature of these risks, or attempted to constrain service members’ communications with Congress about those risks, they should hold the officers accountable and remove them from positions of leadership. Congress owes nothing less to the troops they send to fight our wars.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
     Though not touched on in the article, the real problem is that the A10 has no proponents at the higher ranks of the Air Force because it is already bought and paid for; there's nothing in the A10 for the big Air Force aircraft manufacturing defense contractors. The F35, on the other hand is, is a defense contractor wet dream. It's all pie in the sky and big contracts just to get the first one in the air, let alone outfit it with the gear and programming needed to use it to inflict harm. It's been one cost-overrun after another and delay after delay. It's a national disgrace that has grown to become the most expensive military purchase in history. And it will never match the A10 for the close air support role. It's minimum airspeed is too high and its close-in maneuverability will be horrible. The generals, of course, don't want to poison the well for their post-military careers working for the defense contractors by putting a halt to the boondobble. Their answer: eliminate the close air support mission for at least 10-12 years and then attempt it with the F35.   As a former ground troop, that's grounds for the Air Force generals' court-martial and dishonorable discharge. I would not be alive today were it not for close air support. And there are tens of thousands of veterans who can say that in all truth. The A10 wasn't available back in my day, but by all reports its the best close air support weapons platform ever developed. It's a tank killer and is heavily armored, with redundant systems for pilot and aircraft survivability. The A10 is literally built around a 30 mm rotary cannon that fires at 3,900 rounds per minute. It also carries air to ground rockets and is the only close air support aircraft still in the U.S. arsenal. Fortunately, John McCain "get it" on the close air support mission and has managed to mostly protect the A10 from the generals. If you want to learn  more about the F35 scandal, try this Wikipedia article section; although it's enoug
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